Bubba claims he should be a Tea Party hero

Bill Clinton claims he should the a hero of the Tea Party because he balanced the budget by increasing taxes and cutting the size of government

Speaking of policies, you balanced the budget and cut the size of the government. How come you’re not a hero of the Tea Party.

I thought I should’ve been their favorite politician. I think because I didn’t do it according to the ideology. I raised taxes and cut spending. I did it with a mix of policies that also left us money to invest in our future and in our quality of life. I think that’s really important. There are some things that the government has to do because the private sector does not have the capacity to advance the public interest in that way.

Does Bill Clinton deserve credit for balancing the budget and cutting the size of government?  Lets look at some charts. Here is Federal Spending and Revenue from 1965 to 2010.

Revenue increased dramatically during the last years of the Clinton administration, but spending also increased. Clinton's claim to have reduced the size of government is mostly false. Where did this big spike in revenue come from. Was it Bubba's tax increase? Clinton did raise tax rates, but a very large part of the revenue increase came from capital gains taxes(pdf).  This rate was actually cut in the 1990's from 28% to 20%. Capital gains revenue increased dramatically because of the cut and selling during the tech stock bubble of the late 1990s.

Bill Clinton was President when the budget was temporarily balanced, but the reasons are not what he claims. Whether he deserves any credit or not, I will leave up to the reader.